Hackathons, small, fast and completely out of control

What @mwotton and @chris_beckett learnt and built at RailsCamp AU 2012, and what it means for undirected effort.

Transcript

1. HACKATHONS FAST, SMALL & COMPLETELY OUT OF CONTROL Thursday, 13 December 12
2. @chris_beckett Thursday, 13 December 12
3. @mwotton Thursday, 13 December 12
4. THERE ARE THREE THINGS TO DO AT RAILSCAMP Thursday, 13 December 12
5. 5% 15% 80% Alcohol Werewolf Code AND WE DID ALL OF THEM Thursday, 13 December 12
6. TREASURE WAR A competitive game of incomplete information Thursday, 13 December 12
7. Thursday, 13 December 12
8. WORKING PROTOTYPE Ruby NCURSES Manual Thursday, 13 December 12
9. THE ROAD TO INTELLIGENCE Thursday, 13 December 12
10. Subsumption Architecture “Planning is just a way of avoiding figuring out what to do next” R. A. Brooks (1987) Thursday, 13 December 12
11. THE DRUNKARD class DrunkenWalker < Bot def choose(state,tiles) return(['move', {dir: ['n', 'e', 's', 'w'].sample}]) end end Thursday, 13 December 12
12. class WallHugger def choose(state,tiles) @facing ||= 'n' ['move', {dir: in_space(state,tiles) ? @facing : most_right(state, tiles)] end def in_space(state, tiles) surrounding(state.you.position).all? do |tile| tile.type != 'wall' end end def most_right(state, tiles) face_index = DIRECTIONS.index @facing (-1..2).find_index do |offset| next_dir = DIRECTIONS[(face_index + offset) % 4] free(apply_move(next_dir, state.you.position), tiles) && next_dir end end end THE WALKER Thursday, 13 December 12
13. THE GATHERER class Dropper < Bot def choose(state, tiles) you = state.you if you.have_treasure && you.position == you.stash.position return ['drop', {}] end end end Thursday, 13 December 12
14. THE SOLDIER class Killer < Bot def choose(state, tiles) you = state.you target = you.position.neighbours.find do |tile| tile.type == 'player' && tile.player.name != you.name end target && ['attack', { 'dir' => BotUtils.to_dir(you.position, target) }] end end Thursday, 13 December 12
15. THE PATHFINDER class StashSeeker < Seeker def abort?(state, tiles) state.you.have_treasure end def targetable?(square, state) square.is_stash && square.position != state.you.stash.position && !square.treasures.empty? end end class Seeker # some caching logic elided def choose(state, tiles) return nil if abort?(state, tiles) tiles.find do |pos, tile| targetable?(tile, state) && @gridsearch.move(tiles, state.you.position, pos) end end end Thursday, 13 December 12
16. TOP-DOWN BOTTOM-UP GAMES BUSINESS Planning A* GOFAI Our stupid bot Hierarchy Enterprise Hackathons Start-ups CONCLUSIONS Thursday, 13 December 12
17. Questions? Thursday, 13 December 12